11. Wren
Wren
Callum’s truck smells like this weird mix of smoke and one of those cinnamon pine tree air fresheners, and Soren’s thigh is pressed against mine in the back seat.
“You two good?” Callum asks, eyes finding us in the rearview. He’s got that solid, steady energy where nothing seems that serious as long as he’s driving. Milo’s in the passenger seat, twisted all the way around with his chin on the headrest, watching us with soft eyes that say way too much.
“We’re good,” Soren says. His voice is a little rough from the reading. His fingers find mine on the seat between us, threading through like it’s something he’s done a hundred times.
I look down at our hands. My brain is doing the thing where it wants to memorize every detail. The shape of his knuckles. The ink stain on his index finger. The way he holds on like he means it.
Callum pulls away from the gallery curb. In the side mirror, I catch Jude with his arm slung around Rhys’s waist, holding his phone up to snap a picture of us leaving.
“The reading was beautiful,” Milo says quietly. “Professor Hannover was crying, Soren. Actual tears.”
“She was not.”
“She was. Dabbing her eyes with a program. I have pictures.”
Soren laughs, ducking his head, and his thumb sweeps across my knuckle. Once. Small and deliberate. My whole hand goes hot.
It’s a short ride. Callum drops us at Soren’s building with a “text if you need anything” that’s aimed at both of us but mostly Soren.
Milo gives a little wave through the window that somehow says I’m rooting for you, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and okay, actually do everything I wouldn’t do all at once.
Then the truck is gone, and it’s the two of us on the sidewalk. The streetlight hums and flickers.
“Come up?” Soren asks. “Just... to decompress. I’m too wired to sleep.”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough. “Okay.”
His apartment is different.
Last time I was here, the emptiness hit me first. Rooms too big, hollowed out by roommates who’d paired off and moved on. But he’s been working. His bedroom door is open, light spilling warm and golden into the hall, and when I follow him in, I stop in the doorway.
He’s turned his bed into a nest. Blankets everywhere, all different kinds, piled up like he raided every closet in the apartment.
And then there are the birds. All seven of them lined up on the headboard shelf, watching like they’re on guard duty.
My whole body reacts before I can stop it. That deep, territorial roll of scent I’ve never been able to control around him, pine and honey pouring out of me, layering over everything that’s Soren: his lavender and ink and warm paper. The room goes thick with both of us.
He turns to look at me, lips parted.
“Is this—“ He gestures at the nest. “Is it too much? Milo said it might be too much. Jude said it wasn’t enough. Benji said, and I quote, ‘If the man doesn’t lose his entire mind over this, he’s broken.’”
“It’s not too much.”
“You stopped walking.”
“I stopped walking because my knees aren’t working right now.”
He smiles. Not the big, bright one he gave the crowd at the gallery. This one is small and private and a little crooked. A little scared.
“Thank you for being there tonight,” he says. “I kept looking for you in the audience, and you were always... right there. Every single time.”
I cross the room in two steps. My hands find his waist like they’ve memorized the route. “I was proud of you.”
Saying I was proud of him feels stupid and small. It doesn’t even come close. My chest hurt listening to him read about hands building little worlds, knowing he meant mine, knowing he still doesn’t know, knowing I’m too chickenshit to tell him.
“Yeah?” His fingers curl into the front of my shirt, twisting the fabric.
“Yeah. You were...” I shake my head. “You were something.”
He kisses me.
Slower this time. Softer. His mouth is warm and tastes like cheap gallery wine and the green tea he’s always drinking, and he kisses me like he’s trying to learn the shape of my lips.
I let him. One hand on his jaw, the other at the small of his back, pulling him close until there’s no space left between us.
His cardigan goes first. I slide it off his shoulders, and it pools on the floor.
He’s already working on my buttons, fingers quick and a little shaky.
My shirt joins his. Then I’m looking at his bare chest in the lamplight, the curve of his collarbones, the dark trail of hair below his navel, the way his ribs move with every breath, and I have to sit on the edge of the bed before my legs make the decision for me.
“Wren?”
“Give me a second.”
He steps between my knees. His fingers push through my hair, gentle, and I press my forehead to his sternum and breathe.
“You okay?” he asks.
“You’ve got a freckle under your collarbone I’ve been thinking about since the gallery,” I say against his skin. Zero filter. Just gone. “Left side. I need a second with that.”
His laugh is a shaky puff of air. “You’re kind of killing me.”
“Good. Mutual.”
Our other clothes come off slower. I pull his jeans down, kissing his hipbone, the inside of his thigh, the soft skin just over his knee.
He steps out of them and stands there completely naked, flushed from his chest to his ears.
I want to carve this. I want to get a block of cherrywood and keep this moment forever.
When he reaches for my belt, I let him. His fingers fumble with the buckle, and he laughs once, nervous, before getting it. I lift my hips so he can pull my jeans off. Then we’re both stripped bare.
“Wren.” His voice drops. Careful. “Can we talk about something?”
My pulse kicks hard. He can probably feel it through his palm on my shoulder.
“You’re my mate, aren’t you?”
Oh God. I was not expecting this. I don’t know why I wasn’t.
Soren isn’t dumb, and what’s happening here is obvious.
No matter how careful I’ve been, no matter how slow I’ve been trying to take it, there’s no denying it.
I know it-have known for a long time. I don’t know why I didn’t think Soren would realize it either.
Maybe because he says it so confidently. No mess, no fuss. Like it just is.
Mate. My mate.
“Yeah.”
He nods. He fingers a blanket, not quite looking at me. “And I know what mates do. They… bite, right? A mating bite.”
Is this really happening? I feel like we’ve gone from zero to sixty in no time at all. Maybe I’m dreaming.
“I know it’s permanent. I know once you do it... that’s it.”
“That’s it,” I say, throat tight. “No going back. For me or for me. If I mark you, Soren, you’re stuck with me. And I’m—“ I stop. The lie is right there, the one I tell myself on a loop. Not enough. Just the guy who fixes things. “I need you to be sure.”
His hands come up to my face. Both of them. He cups my jaw, thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and makes me look at him.
“I have been waiting for something exactly like you for my entire life,” he says, his voice thick.
“And I was so scared it wouldn’t come that I almost talked myself out of believing in it.
But you’re here. You’re real. And I don’t want to go back.
” His eyes are bright, wet. “I want you to bite me.
I want it to be permanent. I want—“ His voice cracks.
“I want to stop being afraid that wanting this so much is the thing that ruins it.”
Every excuse I’ve ever made for keeping my distance collapses.
I kiss him. Deep and slow and sure, pulling him into my lap so he’s straddling me. His weight settles against me, bare chest to mine. His cock is hard between us, mine pressed against his thigh. His slick is already starting, warm and wet where our skin meets.
“Okay,” I breathe into his mouth. “Okay. Yeah.”
I lay him back on the nest. The blankets are impossibly soft under my hands.
His hair fans out against a flowered quilt.
I reach for the nightstand drawer he showed me last time, my hand finding the lube, and we both huff a laugh because I know exactly where it is now. He blushes this gorgeous deep red.
“Shut up,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face said it.”
I start with my mouth. Kiss my way down his throat, his chest, the flat plane of his stomach.
I tongue the crease of his hip, and he jolts, fingers tangling in my hair.
Then lower. I lick into him, tasting his slick and his salt, spreading him open with my thumbs and working my tongue in slow circles until his thighs are trembling on either side of my head.
His hole is already wet, slick leaking steadily, and the taste of him, sweet and sharp and his, makes my head swim.
I press my tongue inside, fucking him with it in lazy strokes while my hands hold his hips down so he can’t squirm away.
One finger. He clenches, then melts around me when I find the right spot, and the sound he makes is high and broken and perfect.
I keep it there, just one, rubbing slow circles against his prostate while I watch his face.
The way his lips part. The crease between his brows softening as the stretch goes from too much to not enough.
His hips start making these tiny involuntary rolls, pushing down onto my hand.
“There,” I murmur against his inner thigh, when his hips find the angle on their own. “You found it. Keep going.”
Two fingers, slicked with lube on top of what’s already there, and I stretch him carefully.
He hisses at the added width, and I hold still, letting him adjust, my free hand pressed flat on his hipbone to ground him.
After a few breaths he rocks down again, deliberate, taking my fingers deeper.
I crook them, rub over his prostate until his cock twitches and more slick floods my hand, dripping warm down my wrist and onto Benji’s chunky knit blanket.
“We’re ruining Benji’s blanket,” he says, breathless, and the laugh that comes out of me is surprised and real.
“I’ll wash it.”
“He’ll know, Wren. He’ll look at it, and he’ll know.”